"MAC’s memo focuses on blinding lasers because of the diplomatic analogies between today’s meeting and that earlier CCW process, but there are even earlier examples of emerging military technologies being banned early and quickly for humanitarian reasons. In fact, the first weapon ever to be subject to a multi-lateral treaty ban was banned before it was widely deployed: the expanding or “dum-dum” bullet. Dum-dums were designed to flatten upon impact and thus created superfluous wounds. Exploding bullets, whose horrors were evident after the American Civil War, were banned even earlier with the St. Petersburg Declaration. Flattening bullets or “dum-dums” were developed in the late 19th century and were quickly banned outright by the Hague convention of 1899 before they were widely used on the international battlefield (though they had been used in British colonial wars). According to Robin Copeland and Dominique Loye, the ban has been widely adhered to, though according to Wikipedia they remain in use for hunting and (perhaps ironically) in police operations. At any rate, they too represent a case of an emerging military technology with clear utility that was abandoned through international declaration before they were widely used."

And, if one has more than a superficial grasp of small arms and wound ballistics, you'd understand that the only reason why the world has abided by the hollow point ban. FMJ is superior in general for military use and law enforcement uses hollow points not for their lethality, but for reducing the risk of over penetration.

The Limits of Armchair WarfareBy JACOB WOOD and KEN HARBAUGHMAY 20, 2014Pravda on the Hudson

BOTH of us have a deep appreciation for the work of drone pilots. Whether patrolling the Helmand Valley with a sniper team or relying on drone-driven intelligence to plan manned aerial missions, we often prayed that the drone operators supporting us were cool, calm and collected.

But neither of us ever imagined that drones would do anything more than augment the manned systems that provide aerial reconnaissance and close air support for troops on the ground. We took for granted that humans on the front lines would always play the lead role.

That is why a series of proposed measures over the last year and a half by the Pentagon have us concerned. It is increasingly clear that our military leadership has become so enamored of the technological mystique of drones that they have lost touch with the realities of the modern battlefield.

Perhaps the most glaring example, especially for former snipers and pilots like us, is the Pentagon’s recent decision to scrap the A-10, a heavily armed close-air support plane officially nicknamed the Warthog but known to troops as the Flying Gun. This battlefield workhorse flies slow and low, giving pilots a close-up of what troops on the ground need. Those pilots are an aerial extension of the units below them, working in a closer relationship than a drone and its operator ever could. But the A-10 is not sleek and sexy, and it doesn’t feed the brass’s appetite for battlefield footage delivered to screens thousands of miles away, the way a swarm of drones can.

True, the A-10 fleet is more expensive than a drone program, and in this era of budget consciousness, it’s reasonable to argue for cutting it as a cost-saving measure. The problem is, the decision also fits a disturbing pattern.

In February 2013, the Pentagon announced plans to create a new award — the Distinguished Warfare Medal — for drone pilots and “cyberwarriors,” which would rank above the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. In other words, a drone pilot flying a mission from an armchair in Nevada might be afforded greater recognition than a rifleman wounded in a combat zone.

That is ridiculous. As much as we both came to appreciate the work of drone teams, we never once prayed that they be brave. Those on the front lines require real courage because they face real danger. But if a drone overhead gets hit, a monitor somewhere might go fuzzy, and its operator might curse his poor luck for losing an expensive piece of equipment.

After a public outcry, and under criticism from Congress, the Pentagon relented, and the award was canceled.

Still, these two episodes raise troubling questions about how policy makers view the longest wars in American history. Our most senior leaders in the Pentagon, civilian and military alike, increasingly understand warfare through the literal lens of a drone camera. And this tendency affects decisions much closer to the front lines than awards ceremonies.

If the secretaries and flag officers responsible for the Distinguished Warfare Medal spent as much time (or any time) in a sniper hide or an A-10 cockpit as they did monitoring drone feeds, they would not consider elevating a “Nintendo” medal above those awarded for true heroism and sacrifice.Continue reading the main storyRecent CommentsWinthrop Staples35 minutes ago

All this yet again suggests that we need to somehow get some of our elite's skin in the game. One could have a truly lottery draft with no...michael adamian1 hour ago

You are speaking of the best way to murder mostly innocent civilians who we terrorize daily with drones over their homes to kill mostly...jack1 hour ago

All war is bad and for a Nation that prides itelf on "Exceptionalism" when will we find a nonviolent and less expesnive way to deal with...

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These leaders deserve some of the criticism, but they are not the only ones to blame. The American public, which has largely absolved itself of responsibility for sending nearly three million of its citizens to fight, neither knows nor cares to know the real price of war.Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyAdvertisement

The controversy surrounding the A-10 retirement and the Distinguished Warfare Medal should be a wake-up call, a reminder that after over 10 years of fighting, we still need to educate the broader American public about the true cost of the wars fought in its name. Lost in all the allure of high-tech gadgets is the fact that, on the ground and in the air, thousands of men and women continue to risk their lives to promote America’s security and interests.

When Americans venture into harm’s way, the last thing we should want is a fair fight. We both owe a great deal to the drones and operators that cleared routes ahead of us or provided intelligence for a manned flight. But while we appreciate their role, we know that they can never provide the kind of truly connected battlefield support that a well-trained pilot can. And when we recognize them, we do so for their skill, not their courage.

The moment we conflate proficiency and valor, we cheapen the meaning of bravery itself. Without a true appreciation of the cost of war, more sons and daughters will be sent to fight without the consideration such a decision deserves.

As events in Eastern Europe force us to rethink military assumptions and post-Cold War diplomacy, we will soon face the reality that future conflicts cannot be won by joystick alone. War is ugly, and attempts to lessen its horrors will put yet more distance between the American public and the men and women fighting on its behalf.

Assassination Drones: A Tremendous Threat to Law Enforcement: This Technology Will Reshape the Meaning of “War”Mike AdamsJune 9th, 2014Natural NewsComments (51)Read by 2,443 people

Editor’s note: The following article from Mike Adams of Natural News delves into the topic of micro drone technology and how it will shape the future. We know that the U.S. military has been using drones to effectively kill scores of enemies (and innocents) in the middle east, and some local police departments have begun utilizing drone technology for surveillance here at home. On the commercial side, we’ve seen promotional videos that depict Amazon drones delivering boxes to customers and real estate agents using them to promote homes for sale.

But these implementations only scratch the surface of what’s to come. With advancements in drone technology now leading to smaller, faster and easier-to-control drone systems like quadracopters, it is only a matter of time before these robotic devices are used for other, not necessarily legal purposes.

As Mike notes, one of the first up and coming uses will likely include the ability to assassinate individuals remotely, either through launching a projectile at a target, or simply going kamikaze and blowing it up. This will undoubtedly spur new innovations in the self defense market as well, as high value individuals the world over rush to protect themselves against the possibility that they will be targeted by a swarm of deadly drone bots. It is an interesting topic to explore, because it will happen in the very near future. Micro-drones won’t just be able to kill us or protect us, they’ll be capable of watching us everywhere we go. In the next few years, when someone says “I wish I was a fly on that wall,” they may well be able to realistically make it happen.

There is no stopping this technology. It’s coming whether we like it or not. Counter technologies that can remotely shut down these systems would be the only plausible solution to those concerned about the threat. Portable non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse defense guns, anyone?________________________________________Citizens strike back: Tiny, low-cost drones may one day assassinate corrupt politicians, corporate CEOs and street criminalsBy Mike Adams (Natural News)

This is an important analysis article on what I believe will be a coming wave of “Kamikaze assassination micro drones” which will soon be affordable enough for everyday citizens to deploy against selected targets. Why is this discussion important? Because these micro drones have the very real potential to re-shape the distribution of power across our planet… and they may pose a real danger to public safety and security across society.

(As you read this article, please bear in mind that I do not in any way condone the tactical applications described herein. This article is a WARNING, not an endorsement, of this very dangerous convergence of trending technologies which may threaten us all.)

Tiny assassination drones must be understood as a revolutionary new kind of weapon, and there is firm historical precedent for dramatic sociopolitical shifts rising out of such revolutions.

For example, the invention of the gunpowder-based rifle radically decentralized military power, making firepower affordable and available to the masses. This caused a global wave of popular revolutions that ultimately lead to modern-day representative government, where those in power were suddenly forced to listen to the needs of their armed citizens. (Before the invention of gunpowder, kings simply deployed heavily-armored knights against citizens, forcing the peons into obedience thanks to a vastly superior weapons and defense system that was completely out of reach of the masses.)

Today we have large-scale militarized “drones” — unmanned aerial vehicles or UAV’s — enjoying widespread deployment by the Pentagon, which plans to spend $2.5 billion next year on these drones (1). These UAVs conduct mission reconnaissance, target acquisition and weapons delivery all on the same platform. For now, they represent a battlefield tactical edge for the United States of America, but that advantage is likely to be short-lived for reasons discussed here.

From studying trends in drone development, both in terms of software and hardware, I am now predicting the development of facial-recognition “kamikaze micro drones” capable of carrying out targeted human assassination missions with remarkable precision and reliability. The four trends that will lead to this are:

1) Drone miniaturization: The development of mass-produced, affordable “micro drones” about the size of a common bird. These will likely be produced as hobby aircraft which will be easily modified to take on a more aggressive role.

2) Facial recognition systems: The miniaturization of facial recognition software / hardware systems which may be deployed on micro drones and powered by very small on-board power supplies.

4) Incremental improvements in the power density of on-board batteries, allowing greater flight time and more CPU-intensive on-board computations.These four trends will ultimately result in the creation of “Kamikaze assassination micro drones” with the ability to search for, identify and terminate a specific human target. It is likely, in fact, that many governments of the world are already working on this technology.

This technology will reshape the meaning of “war“ by allowing rogue nations like North Korea, for example, to simply ship tens of thousands of such drones into the USA via China, marked as “toys” on import manifests. Once in the USA, these micro assassination drones can be dropped from low-flying airplanes or released from vehicles in city parks to carry out their pre-programmed missions of targeted assassinations across U.S. cities.

Future Air Force battles may be carried out by palm-sized aircraft

The United States Air Force already appears to be developing such devices, by the way. As journalist Susanne Posel writes at OccupyCorporatism.com: (2)Under the Air Vehicles Directorate branch of the US Air Force, research is being conducted to perfect remote-controlled micro air vehicles (MAVs) that are expected to “become a vital element in the ever-changing war-fighting environment and will help ensure success on the battlefield of the future.”

See this promotional video about MAVs under development right now:

How Kamikaze micro drones will work

Kamikaze micro drones do not need to carry conventional weapons or explosives of any kind. Instead, they may simply carry an on-board serrated puncture weapon such as a crossbow hunting broad tip, affixed to the end of a shaft in a spear arrangement.

As shown in the image on the right, these devices are commonly available right now on Amazon.com, where they are called “Killzone broadheads” and boast the following marketing claims:

* The new Killzone Crossbow is a 2 blade rear-deploying broadhead that packs a devastating 2″ cutting diameter

These crossbow hunting tips can also be purchased with cash at any sporting goods store.

Next, the Kamikaze drone’s on-board operating system is loaded with the facial imagery of the intended target, then released in an area the target is known to frequent (such as near their home, a restaurant, or their place of employment).

The micro drone expends energy to fly to a “perch” location from which it can conduct covert facial recognition surveillance without being spotted and without expending the enormous amount of energy needed to hover in place. From this perch location, the drone will observe faces passing by, comparing them to its intended target.Once the micro drone spots the intended target, it can either “dial home” and transmit a picture of the target to a remote operator for a human kill decision, or it can be programmed to make that decision autonomously based on a threshold of certainty in the facial recognition match.

Once the kill decision has been made, the micro drone deploys its serrated spear and launches itself toward the target at high speed, aiming to thrust the spear into the neck of the subject. A two-inch-wide cutting pattern almost guarantees the blades will slice through an artery or possibly even sever the spinal column. Although the micro drone’s mass seems quite small, the human neck is especially vulnerable and can be easily penetrated by a serrated short spear carried with the momentum of a small object flying at high speed.

Once the attack is complete, the drone is simply abandoned, having completed its job. It can be pre-programmed to wide its own memory, erasing any traces of its programming code or flight history.

What if anyone could kill almost anyone else for about five thousand dollars?

In time, such drones could be purchased or built for less than a thousand dollars each. With an estimated mission success rate of 20%, that means the out-of-pocket cost to successfully kill someone with one of these drones might only be $5,000.

Before I explain why this matters, let me be clear that I am wholly against the use of violence to achieve commercial or political gain, and in no way do I condone the use of Kamikaze drones as described here. In fact, this article should serve as a warning to what’s coming in the hopes that we might achieve some globally-observed limits on drone deployment.

But until that happens, here’s where this is headed: At $5,000 per assassination, there is a very long list of corporations, politicians, activists and individuals who would be willing to deploy these drones to assassinate all kinds of targets: members of Congress, corporate rivals, political enemies, competing drug dealers, ex-wives or ex-husbands… and the list goes on.

These kamikaze micro drones could even be used as weapons of war. Imagine Iran or North Korea, for example, deploying thousands of such devices around Washington D.C. with the sole purpose of killing as many U.S. Senators and members of Congress as possible. Tactically, that’s a very low-cost war with a very high “return” in terms of “enemy casualties” from the point of view of the attacker.

But individuals and vigilantes could also use the technology for their own purposes at a local level. Ponder for a moment what happens when anyone with a mere $5,000 and a few photos of their intended target can simply release a small drone out of a backpack and set back while that micro drone locates and assassinates their intended target (using commonly available killing weapons, no less). The ease of operations is shockingly low, making such solutions readily available to anyone willing to surf the ‘net and download the operating system that carries out such activities. (Source code will no doubt be posted on many hacktivism sites.)

It’s not difficult to imagine local neighborhood watch groups pooling their funds and deploying drones to kill local drug dealers who terrorize the streets, for example. Even vigilantes who seek to protect their fellow citizens might see themselves as some sort of “drone superheroes” who deploy kamikaze drones to take out local crime bosses or dirty politicians who violate the law.

Everyday citizens would have the power to assassinate Presidents

What we are really looking at here — and again I must repeat and urge that IN NO WAY DO I CONDONE OR ENCOURAGE SUCH ACTS OF VIOLENCE — is the rise of a decentralized, affordable technology which could someday allow ordinary citizens to quite literally assassinate Presidents.

Which Presidents? Any that you can imagine, of course: Presidents of nations, Presidents of corporations, Presidents of universities and so on. It is very difficult to imagine how highly-visible people could be protected against such attacks based on present-day defensive tactics and weaponry. Handguns and rifles, for example, would be very hard-pressed to shoot down a fast-moving micro drone making a kamikaze attack.

The U.S. Secret Service, a group of incredibly well-trained and highly-dedicated individuals, probably has never faced a micro drone attack and very likely has no training for how to deal with such an attack. Clearly this is going to have to change in the very near future as such drones come within reach of everyday people. Every high-ranking member of every government around the world, in fact, is going to need to start thinking about how to be safe out in the open once these micro drones become a reality. (I have developed some detailed ideas on defensive tactics against such attempts, if anybody from the U.S. Secret Service is interested…)

The bottom line on this is that anyone who appears out in the open — giving a speech, taking a walk in the park, or pursuing a campaign trail — could be easily assassinated with one or more such Kamikaze micro drones. No one is immune from such attacks.

Another key “advantage” of this weapon system — from the point of view of the attacker — is that the attack is virtually untraceable. The person who launches the attack could be miles away by the time the drone actually strikes, and there’s no trail of gun registrations, ammo purchases or explosives to track down. In fact, the drone could be programmed to wipe its own memory clean after the attack is carried out, erasing any on-board evidence of the executable code, target images or operating system. The only evidence left behind would be the hardware platform of the drone itself, which is likely to be based on a readily available “hobby” drone chassis that’s impossible to link to any specific individual.

As you can see, this would create real nightmares for law enforcement investigators. And in a society that we all would like to see remain peaceful and safe, the idea that some individuals could operate deadly assassination drones with near-impunity should be downright alarming. Because many people would use this technology with some highly destructive intent.

A tremendous threat to law enforcement

As Natural News readers already know, I have worked closely alongside law enforcement in the past, engaging in fundraising, defensive martial arts training and more. One of my greatest fears with this kamikaze micro drone weapons platform is that it could easily be used by even a poorly-financed drug gang to eliminate local law enforcement personnel en masse, right before a major drug run activity takes place.

A small air force of such drones — say, 100 drones at just $1,000 each — could swarm a small town and kill any member of law enforcement spotted in public. That’s a mere $100,000 investment for a drug gang that might be making a multi-million-dollar smuggling run through a small urban chokepoint.

Similarly, an activist group committed to acts of violence could quite literally launch a war on the CEOs or employees of any targeted corporation. If some group didn’t like an oil company, or a factory farming operations, or even a weapons manufacturer, it would quite easily purchase and launch a swarm of micro-drones to kill employees as they walk through the company’s parking lot each day, for example. It doesn’t take very many casualties of key corporate scientists to derail R&D programs.

In all, the potential for a “micro drone Wild West” is very real and very concerning. And here’s why it could be even more wild than you might imagine…Mass chaos because there’s no personal risk

The availability of low cost but highly effective kamikaze micro drones could unleash real chaos across society for a reason you may not have anticipated: the attackers do not put themselves at risk.

Allow me to explain: In a town where everybody carries a loaded gun, you have the widespread available of weapons, but each person puts their own life at risk by deploying any such weapon. That’s why an armed society “is a polite society,” as they say. Guns are everywhere, but nobody wants to die in a gunfight, so the guns stay in their holsters. In summary, you can’t deploy the weapon without the risk of getting killed in the process.

But kamikaze micro drones take the risk of personal harm out of the equation. The weapon is no longer attached to the person. They are physically far apart. Now you have cheap killing machines with zero personal risk of harm on the part of the attacker. If the drone gets destroyed, they’ve only lost whatever money it costs to replace it. Even if the drone gets captured, it’s not easy to link back to the attacker, so personal risk is minimized.

So with micro drones, we have a society where everybody can have a deadly assassination weapon without the risk that would traditionally accompany an attempted assassination. In effect, we now have “anonymous assassination weapons,” and as we’ve seen in online gaming, the results of anonymous actions are often disastrous: when their own real life isn’t at stake, people will behave in erratic, power-hungry ways that would never be pursued if their own lives were at risk. And because the micro drone does the killing for them, “killers” no longer have to do any killing themselves. They don’t even need to know how to use a knife, or a gun or explosives. All they need is to buy a micro drone, download the kamikaze software, load up a couple of pictures of their target, and let it loose on the sidewalk.

That makes killing frighteningly easy, affordable and accessible to the masses. For obvious reasons, this is not something we would ever want to see in a civilized society.Drone anarchy?

In the minds of some people, this might in some ways be argued as a good thing. In a world where power is increasingly centralized in the hands of the few, the ability to easily acquire and deploy affordable, targeted killing machines might be called by some a “leveling of the playing field of power.”

Yet I would urge a careful review of all the implications of such technology before reaching any firm conclusions. The widespread availability of anonymous, autonomous killing machines should be treated with extreme caution. Because in a world where autonomous killing machines are readily available and affordable, those who already sit in positions of centralized power would also have access to these machines in very large numbers.

Anyone the authorities wanted to eliminate could simply have their face images fed into a network of micro drones deployed across any given city. A few hours later, they’re all dead, and the city didn’t even have to involve human police officers or court judges. The drone killings of citizens might even be sanctioned by the courts as a sort of “affordable justice” in a society increasingly burdened by runaway debt and bankruptcies.

Remember: President Obama has already built the “legal” framework for the drone killings of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Now it’s only a question of the technology catching up with the lawlessness that has already been embraced by the government itself (where due process is now considered ancient history).

When considering the implications of these drones, it’s important to look at all the various parties that might be tempted to use them (and for what purpose). It’s not difficult to imagine all the following groups wanting to deploy assassination drones: corporations, vigilantes, drug gangs, the military, the CIA, local law enforcement, federal law enforcement, terrorist groups, nation state enemies of America, anarchists and possibly even entertainment junkies who would stage drone killings just to post the “drone snuff films” on the ‘net.

How to hide from drones

All this means more and more people will someday need to hide their faces if they wish to venture out into the open world. This may soon include important political figures, celebrities, corporate leaders and almost anyone with a publicly-recognizable face.

A number of strategies are already being explored for this purpose. For example, artist Adam Harvey is currently working on the CV Dazzle project which explores face paint camouflage patterns that confuse facial recognition systems:

Another inventor has also developed a printable face mask that he calls a Personal Surveillance Identity Prosthetic.His company is Urme Surveillance, and he also has an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for the project.

As the Urme Surveillance website explains, “Our world is becoming increasingly surveilled. For example, Chicago has over 25,000 cameras networked to a single facial recognition hub. We don’t believe you should be tracked just because you want to walk outside and you shouldn’t have to hide either. Instead, use one of our products to present an alternative identity when in public.”

“At least where, as here, the target's activities pose a ‘continued and imminent threat of violence or death' to U.S. persons, ‘the highest officers in the Intelligence Community have reviewed the factual basis’ for the lethal operation, and a capture operation would be infeasible,” the killing would be considered a lawful act of war, the memo concluded.

The more I dig, the more I believe that bots are more dangerous than terrorist attacks and global climate change, by a country mile.

I'm calling it botageddon.

It's a conflict that's both potentially devastating to the human race and less than thirty years out.

Less than thirty years? Yes. That's the point when the number of bots on the planet outnumber us 1,000 to one (or more, much more).The way things are going right now, a conflict where bots take the central stage will happen so fast, nobody will be prepared for it or stop it. Shoot, we've already put increasingly autonomous bots at the top of the violence food chain.

My advice: get ready folks.

The last generation had the cold war and the one before that had WW2. The botageddon is the confrontation everyone under 50 living today, was born to fight.

BTW: In this fight, a shotgun won't be of much use, despite what this ad suggests.

A Bot in Every Garage and on Every Street Posted: 03 Aug 2014 01:00 PM PDTHere's an idea on how fast bots are going to roll out and why botageddon in some form is inevitable. Morgan Stanley (with good reason) anticipates that 100% of all of the automobiles sold in the US will be self-driving by 2026. That's only 12 years from now.What's pushing this forward so fast? Driving bots are already do a better job at driving than people do. Based on the data so far, if 90% of the cars on the road were driven by bots, we'd have 14,000 fewer deaths in the US alone from traffic accidents. That figure alone means that the insurance rates for human drivers are going to be so high (driving by hand will be considered reckless), that few people will be able to afford to do it. The reason this is interesting is that even if we restrict our analysis to automobiles alone, it means that there will be millions of bots on the road in a little over a decade. Not only that:  most of these bots will be autonomous, which means that they can make decisions for themselves almost all will have a large array of sensors and cameras onboard (from radar to range finding lasers to video to infrared...) that are constantly gathering the data needed to navigate the roads Much of the collected data will be sent to the net wirelessly, so when one of these bots learns something new, every bot that connects to its network learns it too.Ponder this idea for a while. Think about world where you are surrounded by bots in every location and in every role.Is botageddon getting easier to imagine?

In the case of humanity, our history is going to be written by bots. Bots aren't just mechanical. They are also made out of software.

Software bots already dominate trading on Wall Street and they are making inroads in nearly every knowledge-based profession.

They are also doing more and more of the writing being done online. For example, bots write nearly all of the earnings reports put out of the earnings announcements by the Associated Press. One Wikipedia editor has used bots to write over 3 million articles for the online encylopedia.

That's just the start. Bot writing will quickly outpace the writing done by human beings.

One reason is that all of the writing already online can be analyzed, parsed, cut, pasted, and repurposed by writing bots. Think about that for a second. We've already put billions of pages of written material online with much more to come. Billions of pages of the raw material bots need to "fake" articles on any topic, no matter how new it is.

From an iWar perspective, bot writing is very powerful.

Writing by bot makes it possible for people to manufacture discussion or controversy on a global scale, by writing thousands of articles and posting them to tens of thousands of sites in dozens of languages (and even voting them up on Reddit, Facebook, and Google to get them coverage).

Think of this as Yellow Journalism by bot. Select a topic, pick a political slant, pick the sites to troll/inflame, press the button and wait for the fireworks.

Book Review: 'Unmanned' by Dan FespermanWhen a drone operator follows a strike order that kills 13 Afghans, he comes undone. Sounds like a plot from 'Homeland' or '24.'By Howard GordonWSJAug. 27, 2014 6:28 p.m. ET

Since antiquity, storytellers have cautioned us about the hazards of men using technology to trespass into realms where only the gods are allowed. For giving man fire, Zeus condemned Prometheus to an eternity chained to a rock with an eagle pecking at his liver. Daedalus's clever wings melted when his son Icarus flew too close to the sun.

Dan Fesperman's excellent and timely ninth thriller, "Unmanned," isn't quite so archetypal, but it does explore the ethical conundrums of the most potent new weapon in the American arsenal: the unmanned aerial drone. Watching our enemy from the sky is one thing, but what if those same eyes are looking down at us? And who is watching the watchers? "Unmanned" is a smart and thoughtful exploration of the unintended consequences of waging war by remote control.

While the technical details of this exhaustively researched book certainly contribute to its authenticity—the author is a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun—it is his sharply drawn characters that make the novel tick. Capt. Darwin Cole's transition from F-16 fighter jock to Predator drone operator is going smoothly: He conducts missions against terrorists thousands of miles away from behind a screen in the Nevada desert. "Each twitch of his hand," Mr. Fesperman writes of Cole's work, "flings a signal of war across the nation's night owls as they make love, make a sandwich, make a mess of things, or click the remote."

Everything changes when Cole receives a command via Internet chat from his mysterious J-TAC, or joint terminal attack controller, whom he has never met, to fire at a target in Afghanistan. The result is 13 civilian deaths, among them several children that he has become familiar with while monitoring the village of Sandar Khosh. Cole is especially haunted by the pixilated image of a young girl whose arm is severed at the shoulder yet who manages to survive the strike. She is, in the grim vernacular of drone warfare, a "squirter," a person who has escaped the strike and is "so called because on infrared they display as squibs of light, streaming from the action like raindrops across a windshield."

Cole is undone—or, if you like, unmanned. After being dishonorably discharged, his wife leaves him, taking their two children with her, and Cole becomes a recluse. His "memories, circling like buzzards," are his only company in his rundown trailer, except for Jeremiah Weed, which Mr. Fesperman tells us is the bourbon of choice among pilots, though the brand reference feels more like product placement.

Cole's chance at redemption comes when he is tracked down by a trio of journalists— Keira Lyttle, Steve Merritt and Barb Holtzman —who suspect that the faulty intelligence Cole received that day may have been intentionally disseminated. His unseen commanding officer, it turns out, was running a shadow operation on behalf of private military contractors and has now gone missing. Cole agrees to give them information—but only on the condition that they make him a full partner in the investigation, like "one of those embedded correspondents, tagging along with a combat unit." He discovers that Lyttle, too, is haunted by guilt (hers is over the death of her married boyfriend, who died in a plane crash). Yet Cole nearly destroys their incipient romance when he spies on her with a homemade drone.

As Cole investigates the mystery, he encounters Nelson Sharpe, a brilliant, half-mad designer of drones. Once a proselytizer, Sharpe is now a Cassandra about the hazards of a technology run amok. Contractors, he tells Cole, are using theaters of war in Iraq and Afghanistan as "glorified test labs, proving grounds, marketplaces for the barter of influence, and, most important of all, state-of-the-art technology. Those women and children at Sandar Khosh were guinea pigs in somebody's ill-advised experiment."

Sharpe introduces Cole to a group of amateurs who've built their own state-of-the-art drones for a few hundred dollars. They are mostly hobbyists, oblivious to the terrifying implications of the fact that this lethal technology is no longer the exclusive provenance of governments. "You could fly these things just about anyplace, right past security checkpoints and every metal detector known to man . . . a nightmare waiting to happen."

I have a particular appreciation for those nightmares—and for the unique challenge Mr. Fesperman is taking on by trying to dramatize a subject as topical and morally ambiguous as drones. On the last season of "24," a homegrown terrorist hijacked several American drones and turned them against innocent people in London. And in the first season of "Homeland," drones were crucial to the plot of the show. Why did the show's protagonist, Sgt. Nicholas Brody, a Marine held captive for eight years in Iraq, turn against his country? Spoiler alert for those who have yet to watch it on iTunes: It was all because of a drone. During his captivity, Brody became close to his captor's young son. One day at school, that child was killed in a U.S. drone strike—an attack the U.S. government covered up.

People accused "Homeland" of being morally squishy for the way we portrayed American drone usage and even more for the idea that such an attack could really make an American soldier sympathetic to the bad guys. I suspect some readers will accuse "Unmanned" of the same. But what Mr. Fesperman understands is that in the brave new world of modern warfare, there are complicated questions with no neat answers. The drone is a remarkable invention, much like Daedalus's wings. But what price will we pay for soaring so high?

Mr. Gordon is a television writer and producer whose shows include "24," "Homeland," "Tyrant"and "Legends."

In April 2014, the human suffering caused by the U.S. drone program was brought home to many Australians for the first time, with reports that the U.S. had killed two Australians in a drone strike in Yemen. In November 2013, Australians Chris Havard and Muslim bin John were killed in a US Predator drone attack on a convoy in Hadramout Province, Yemen. Their deaths were reported in Australia five months later.

The news of the Australian deaths was reported amid increasing concern that Pine Gap, a joint Australian-American facility located in the desert of Australia’s Northern Territory, is used to locate the targets of U.S. drone strikes. Pine Gap controls U.S. spy satellites that intercept communications across key parts of the globe including Pakistan and the Middle East.

Here's one of the reasons that the FAA has seized control of all drones (including toys) and is slowing the development of automated aviation to a crawl. It's a dumb move, since it won't work, but they are doing it anyway.

The reason is that drones make disruption easy.

For example. Let's take a simple $1,350 drone like the X8 from 3D robotics. It's a good product, with solid duration (15m) and payload (.8 kg) numbers.That's more than enough capability for significant disruption with a little innovation.

How so? With GPS auto-navigation and a container that auto-releases its payload over GPS coordinates (an easy mod), it can become the perfect delivery vehicle.What could it deliver? Caltrops for example. A handful of caltrops can shut down automobile traffic on major highways for hours.

The big question: Will the FAA effort to control drones protect against this type of disruption? No. It won't.

It actually makes the situation worse. It prevents the development of the safeguards an economically viable drone delivery network would produce.

Perversely, limiting drone use to big corps (that make political contributions) and government agencies, won't create the economic progress that will turn this technology into a beneficial innovation. It will do just the opposite. It will simply increase the level of economic corruption/stagnation we are already experiencing in the US.

In response to the drone crash at the White House this week, the Chinese maker of the device that crashed said it is updating its drones to disable them from flying over much of Washington, D.C.

SZ DJI Technology Co. of Shenzhen, China, plans to send a firmware update in the next week that, if downloaded, would prevent DJI drones from taking off within the restricted flight zone that covers much of the U.S. capital, company spokesman Michael Perry said.

Mr. Perry said DJI also would update its firmware to disable drone flights across national borders. That later update, he said, is in response to separate news last week that authorities in Tijuana, Mexico, discovered a DJI-made drone that apparently had crashed while attempting to carry drugs into the U.S.

“We want to make sure people are being innovative and creative with the technology, but at the same time we want to make sure people are using it responsibly,” Mr. Perry said. “It’s a tricky balance but we have to think more comprehensibly about how people are using it.”

WASHINGTON — As Major League Baseball’s top players took the field at the All-Star Game in Minneapolis in July, a covert radar system scanned the sky above the 40,000-seat stadium for what security experts said was an emerging threat to public safety: drones.

Using finely tuned detection programs brought in by the Department of Homeland Security, “Operation Foul Ball,” as it was known, identified several small, commercial drones flying in the area. Some were similar to the quadcopter that crashed on the White House lawn Monday.

But the drone detection system, which was considered one of the most advanced in the country and cost several hundred thousand dollars to operate for just that night, had no way of actually stopping drones from flying into the stadium. There was even confusion about whether one of the drones belonged to ESPN.

Confronted with the system’s cost and limitations, baseball officials decided not to use it for the postseason. But those officials had no warning before a drone hovered over at least one playoff game.

A drone flew above the scoreboard during a game at Wrigley Field in September in Chicago. Confronted with the cost and limitations of drone detection, Major League Baseball officials concluded that using a detection system again made little sense.

The National Football League will not say what type of system, if any, it will have in place at the Super Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., on Sunday, though the Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning this week that anyone flying drones over an N.F.L. game could be “intercepted, detained and interviewed.”

While drones have not been used in a terrorist attack on American soil, thwarting them is increasingly becoming a challenge for law enforcement and security officials who are charged with protecting large-scale events like the Super Bowl and high-profile public buildings like the White House. The officials have warned that the low-flying devices could be modified to carry explosives, chemicals, biological agents, guns or cameras.

This month, an analyst for the National Counterterrorism Center told a gathering of military, law enforcement and public utility officials in Arlington, Va., that extremist interest in “unmanned aircraft systems” had spiked recently. In the past 16 months, he said, the working group for unmanned aircraft systems threats had grown to 65 members from four, according to a participant at the gathering.

“Efforts by terrorists to use drone technology are obviously a concern for N.C.T.C. and the intelligence community,” said a spokesman for the counterterrorism center, who requested anonymity to discuss security matters. “Our focus remains on identifying these threats and supporting those agencies who are responsible for countering them.”

Officials at the White House said that the Secret Service’s air security branch had been working for years to find ways to deter low-flying drones that are too small and fly too low to be tracked by conventional radar, which was designed to pick up missiles and planes.

But Monday morning’s incident suggested that the systems in place around the White House were unable to prevent even a toy drone from flying over the wrought-iron fence.

More details of the incident emerged Thursday. The federal worker who has admitted he was operating the drone was in his apartment, a friend said, flying the drone out the window at 3 a.m., when he lost contact with the device and was helpless as it flew away.

“The whole thing just spiraled out of control when he lost contact,” said the friend, who asked not to be identified because of the legal issues involved. The device was later noticed by a Secret Service officer, but the officer had no way of stopping it before it crashed into a tree on the South Lawn.

Law enforcement officials said the person flying the drone, whom they have not named, did not pose a threat. And they said that most commercially available drones were unable to carry enough explosives to significantly damage the White House.

The vast majority of drones are purchased for nonthreatening, personal use, and businesses are expressing interest in using drones to speed deliveries, produce high-quality videos or improve management of crops.

But officials are not taking the threat lightly. A White House spokesman said Wednesday that the Secret Service was “constantly reviewing emerging technologies.” Law enforcement officials said that the government did not yet have a “silver bullet” that could stop a drone in its tracks.

At the gathering in Arlington this month, intelligence and law enforcement officials showed a widely watched YouTube video of a masked man demonstrating the effectiveness of a hobbyist drone equipped with a paintball gun and a remote trigger. The video showed the drone accurately firing on cutouts of human beings.

A spokesman for DJI, which manufactured the drone that crashed at the White House, said Wednesday that the company took security issues seriously and had issued updates to its software that would use GPS chips in the drones to block their use in much of Washington. The company has issued similar blocks near 2,000 airports worldwide.

“The platform will recognize when it’s a certain distance from those no-fly zones and stop itself,” said Michael Perry, a spokesman for the company.

Mr. Perry said that his company had been in contact with law enforcement about ways to develop protections against the misuse of its drones. But he said that the company would never be able to make sure that people only used the drones responsibly, for conservation efforts, firefighting, search and rescue, sports or recreation.

“Ultimately, it depends on how people choose to use the technology,” Mr. Perry said. “We can create 100 barriers to someone using this technology improperly, and someone will find the 101st way to use it improperly.”

For law enforcement officials, the question is whether they can develop systems that effectively detect, and eventually stop, drones approaching potential targets. Several companies, including DroneShield, advertise commercial systems that can detect and warn about drones.

“Our solution would have been able to warn people before the drone got over the property,” Brian Hearing, a founder of DroneShield, said this week after the White House incident.

The problem with the system that was used at the All-Star Game last summer was that even after a drone was spotted on radar, security officials had to find its operator on the ground before the drone was maneuvered over the stadium.

Jeffrey B. Miller, the chief of security for the N.F.L., said that the league was increasingly finding drones at stadiums and that it had banned them from team properties before the season. In the past year, though, 12 drones have landed around stadiums on game days, he said.

Mr. Miller said the league had adopted protocols for what to do if a drone landed on the field during a game. He said that play would be stopped and law enforcement officers who specialize in explosives would be called to determine whether it posed a threat.

“It’s always been hobbyists or enthusiasts,” he said, “never anyone looking to do harm.”